Oil Spill Lawsuits and Dangers

Acadiana On Edge as Latest Attempt to Kill BP's Runaway Well Begins

Massive spill has imperiled not just the Gulf Coast but also the inland oil and gas industry

08/03/2010 | ConsumerAffairs

By Unknown Author

By Leonard Earl JohnsonConsumerAffairs.com

August 3, 2010
We sat along banks of small but comfortable modern chairs in front of floor-to-ceiling windows gazing out at the passing Louisiana countryside.

We are on the second level of the observation car of Amtraks Sunset Limited, bound for Los Angeles. This is the train Dick Powell and Myrna Loy rode in the movie version of Dashiell Hammetts The Thin Man. It connects Americas West Coast to her lesser known Third Coast.

We are bound for Lafayette, the heart of French Louisianas colorful Acadiana. Lafayettes motto is "The Hub City," a title derived from being at the convergence of waterways, railroads and highways. Since the 1950's it has also been the hub of Louisianas offshore oil and gas service industries.

Acadians build even sometimes design the devices that keep deep-water oil drilling the safe and profitable industry that it is normally. Safe? Well, truthfully it has always been a risky business, but an acceptable one.

Lafayettes relatively new train depot belongs to the city, not Amtrak. It is in the process of being joined to an under-construction Rosa Parks Transportation Center and United States Post Office. "Under construction with Obama stimulus money," locals sometimes say with a sneer.

The depot is located downtown one block from the musically historic Grant Street Dance Hall. Two blocks further away is the Evangeline Expressway, the demarcation line dividing old and new Lafayette.

East, past the city airport, the Evangeline Expressway is lined with businesses with internationally known names like Haliburton, KBR, Transocean, and Franks Casing Crew & Rental Tools.

Also found there are the food services, and the transport services for the offshore rigs. And, yes, the pipes, gears, and even the safety valves on most of the rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico came from, or passed through the designing rooms of thousands of shops and offices situated along this corridor.

Lafayette is a clean oil town, a town more populated with engineers than roughnecks. And politically more like Texas than any other city in coastal Louisiana.

Anyone here will readily point out how the Horizon Deepwater explosion, sinking and resulting oil spill was a Gulf Coast anomaly. Many here have told me that there has never been a serious Gulf oil spill before Horizon. This, of course, is not true.

The IXTOC I rig exploded and sank off the coast of Mexico in 1979. At 140 million gallons, it was not as large a spill as Horizon, now estimated to exceed 205 million gallons, but it was big. And it spewed oil for ten months in much shallower waters.

140 million gallons spilled in the IXTOC I well blowout in 1979. NOAA photo

Poor memories

We live in an era when few of us even remember the names of the wars we have fought since 1945, let alone a thirty-one-year-old oil spill far away in Mexican waters. So, IXTOC is nearly forgotten. Besides, its damage seems to have been incorporated into the ecosystem of the region without anyone finding oil in their oysters today. True, but their shrimp and oyster industries were devastated for years after the spill.

Everyone here hopes most expect quicker recovery from the Horizon Deepwater spill. Because? Well, because it is now, and we are us, and Moon Graffon tells us so, for two hours every weekday on KPEL radio, the voice of Abbeville/Lafayette. Graffons show is followed daily by three hours of Rush Lumbaughs comparatively calming commentary.

New Orleans radio commentators might never be thought to be pro-Obama, but the charming and popular print-and-radio food critic, Tom Fitzmorris, e-mailed this when asked about the Mexican shrimp and oyster industries' recovery time and how it might be a guide to ours:
"I expect that by Thanksgiving we will have oysters nearly as normal. You can quote me on that."

Out of sight, out of our minds

Computerized graphics move us forward from April 20, when the Horizon Oil Rig exploded killing 11, 50 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River. We see the resulting gusher become a volcano. It spews out plumes of oil dispersed by chemicals far beneath the sea. The plums grow, contract, curl and break off little loops that are left to dance their separate way east towards the Gulf Stream. Or at least somebodys beach.

Oil will likely plop up on Gulf maybe Atlantic beaches for some time to come. Future beachcombers may harvest little hardened tar balls as souvenirs. Shopkeepers might even sell them.

After Hurricane Alex swelled the sea, and the threat of Tropical Storm Bonnie passed, the underwater oil plum drew itself into a smaller glob and headed back west towards Louisiana.

We do not see any tar balls from our trains windows as we roll along the coastal side of the great Atchafalia Basin. The Atchafalia is the last remnant of a once huge continental drainage system that spread swampy wetlands all the way from New Orleans to above St. Louis, Missouri. The Mississippi River is the central force of this system. It is also the continents major migratory bird flyway. Now the Mississippi River is canalized and the swamps have been drained to make way for roads, and towns, and farms, and strip malls.

If you recall, earlier in the disaster, there were plans to pay farmers along this stretch of former wetlands to flood some of their reclaimed land in hopes of luring migrating birds away from the oily fate befalling waterfowl such as Louisianas state bird, the Brown Pelican. The plan has been shelved following the wells temporary capping, and in light of the oils questionable disappearing act.

We have taken this train countless times since the spill began, and we have yet to spot a tar ball not on a computer screen. The computer graphics we have been looking at are on a laptop belonging to a bright blue-eyed English film student. He told us he had worked for two years to launch himself on this, his first world tour.

Vatican Rag

"New York, Memphis, New Orleans,"
he says, as we rock over the Atchafalia River bridge at Morgan City. The Atchafalia River is near its mouth here, and the bridges crossing it are large things with powerful superstructures. Our bright-eyed Brit eyes them in a way that makes me wish I were younger, so I could see the films he might some day make. He is headed to Houston. "Then San Francesco, China, Australia and South Africa, where I have family."

We are joined by another youth who recently graduated high school in New Orleans. He joined his schools ROTC program, he tells us, and expects to ship out soon.

"My grandmother lives in Lafayette,"
he says. "Im going to see her before I go to Iraq or Afghanistan."

He has been drawn to our conversation not by the beer, but by the film students British accent and its promise of news from the great outer world.

They talk of Internet sites. humorous ones mostly unknown to me. I recite for
them the lyrics to Tom Lears Vatican Rag, which they liked. Neither of them had ever heard it before. Surprisingly I remembered it all. They write down notable web sites for me to look up later. I thanked them, and launched into a shameless three-beer interpretation of Tom Lears Balled of Wernher von Braun. They both liked it, but only the Brit knew who von Braun was. Even though the American might likely soon be loosing descendants of Brauns rockets on the world.

The Cajundome

In Lafayette we parted ways. The youths for their respective world tours. Me for the Cajundome, a particularly handsome version of the ubiquitous sports domes that grace every American city of any importance.

The Cajundome is smaller than New Orleans Superdome. What isnt? But the building is graced with elegant architectural detail. It has lines connecting related buildings and rooms that flow like flying buttresses on European cathedrals. And it sits majestically under a broad sky on a sweeping expanse of what is known in Acadiana as "Cajun prairie." Its beauty causes a Cajun friend of mine to never pass without a sigh and exclamation tinged with both hyperbole and pride: "Behold, the Dome of The Cajuns!"

Not just music

Today, inside the Dome there is more to behold than mere football, or big-name music acts. Today, there is politics, the true sport and music of Louisiana. It is a horn kissed by new lips, to be sure, but the notes were blown over an old dance floor worn smooth by generations of masters.

In fact, New Orleans Saints football champion Drew Brees, musicians Lenny Kravitz, Rockin Doopsy, Jr., and actor John Goodman all made their appearance to an audience of 11,000 workers and assorted politicians led by Louisiana Governor and presidential hopeful Bobby Jendal.

Franks Casing Crew & Rental Tools paid 1,000 of its employees to attend, but there is every reason to believe that though they were happy to take the money they were enthusiastically present of their own accord.

Nungesser

Also speaking was Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. Seriously hoarse from three months of yelling at BP, Baton Rouge and Washington politicians, Nungesser continued cutting an agile and hefty figure in the states political dance. His parishs fishing industry is the one most severely impacted by the oil spill and it was speculated that he might not appear in the Cajundome as an indication of some fisure opening between fishing and oil interests. It is, after all, BP's spill, not Obamas Moratorium, that is splashing oil onto Plaquemines Parish wetlands. But both put Louisiana workers out of jobs.

The Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, the industry lobbying arm, paid to rent the dome for the Rally for Economic Survival. The rallying point is: Barack HUSSEIN Obama, lift the offshore drilling moratorium. With Obamas name not spoken without strong emphases on the Middle Eastern middle name, HUSSEIN. Though the rally was billed as nonpartisan, it clearly was anything but.

It seems unlikely this president, or any other, would negotiate policy under such public partisan pressure. This rally was made from the stuff of campaigns and elections, and not designed to garner influence. It was designed to do two things: tar Obama and get the publics mind off BP.

Obamas administration claims the offshore drilling leases given out during the most recent Bush Presidency and the past year of their own did not take safety sufficiently into account. The moratorium is intended to give time for needed new oversight of those leases, they say. Given the magnitude of the Horizon Deepwater disaster one might reasonably see some validity to that point of view. But no one was seeing it that way in the Cajundome.

Following the wells temporary capping, BP began speaking of removing oil collecting devices and workers. Billy Nungesser said, "Are they that stupid? It took weeks for the oil to reach our coast and now they say a week after the cap it is over!"

Today, an attempt at permanently capping the well is to begin. We all wish it great success, no matter who the next president may be.

---

Leonard Earl Johnson is a former cook, merchant seaman, photographer and columnist for Les Amis de Marigny, a New Orleans monthly magazine. Post-Katrina, he has decamped to Lafayette, La. Columns past, present and future are at www.lej.org.

By Leonard Earl JohnsonConsumerAffairs.com

August 3, 2010
We sat along banks of small but comfortable modern chairs in front of floor-to-ceiling windows gazing out at the passing Louisiana countryside.

We are on the second level of the observation car of Amtraks Sunset Limited, bound for Los Angeles. This is the train Dick Powell and Myrna Loy rode in the movie version of Dashiell Hammetts The Thin Man. It connects Americas West Coast to her lesser known Third Coa...

Gulf Spill Could Present Long Term Health Effects

Officials studying physical and psychological impact

The underwater camera no longer shows oil gushing from the ocean floor. Even clean up crews report finding less oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

But this oil spill is not a case of "out of sight, out of mind," health officials say.

Experts continue working to anticipate, outline and minimize the disaster's potential health risks, according to a University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health researcher actively involved in helping the federal government deal with repercussions from the April 20 accident.

Nalini Sathiakumar, M.D., Dr.P.H., an associate professor in UAB's Department of Epidemiology and a pediatric nephrologist, is part of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ad-hoc team formed in July that is in discussions to plan and execute research strategies surrounding health outcomes due to the oil spill.

The Gulf leak was the equivalent of a supertanker spill every week, says Sathiakumar, who was part of an Institute of Medicine panel of health experts who met in New Orleans in June to discuss repercussions from the oil-rig accident.

"This already is an unprecedented tragedy," she said. "We need to move quickly to monitor and study the physical and psychological impacts in the short term and long term among clean-up workers, volunteers and in adults and children, and we need to follow these with long-term studies."

While some of the short-term health effects are known -- watery and irritated eyes, skin itching and redness, coughing and shortness or breath or wheezing -- there also are many unknown health effects, says Sathiakumar, who has researched a prior oil spill. Even tourists, beach-goers and seafood lovers will face some risks in the future, she says.

About 400 tanker spills have occurred since the 1960s, and 38 of them involved supertankers, including the Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska. But only seven of those supertanker spills have been studied, and those examined the short-term toxic and psychological effects with limited analysis of the long-term effects.

Sathiakumar investigated a large spill, the one that resulted when a Greek supertanker ran aground in 2003 off the coast of Karachi, Pakistan. An investigation of the Karachi incident found commonly reported symptoms were temporary eye, throat or skin irritation, headaches or general malaise.

Sathiakumar says these health effects showed a clear sign of decreasing in number as people moved further away from the oil-spill site.

But this oil spill is not a case of "out of sight, out of mind," health officials say.

Experts continue working to anticipate, outline and minimize the disaster's potential health risks, according to a University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health researcher actively involved in helping the federal government deal with repercussions from the April 20 accident.

Nalini Sathiakumar, M.D., Dr.P.H., an associate professor in UAB's Department of Epidemiology and a ...

BP accused of 'carpet-bombing' the ocean with chemicals

While BP has stopped the Gulf oil leak, at least for now, the company is coming under harsh criticism in Congress for the way it's gone about cleaning up the oil spill.

As clean up crews last week reported much of the spilled oil has disappeared from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) released a letter blasting the oil company for using too much dispersant. Markey said BP used thousands of gallons of the chemical each day to try to break up the oil.

"BP often carpet-bombed the ocean with these chemicals and the Coast Guard allowed them to do it," Markey said in the letter.

Attorneys Stuart Smith and Mike Stag, and toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer joined in the criticism of BP, saying the toxic chemical components from crude may pose serious problems for fisheries.

The three say the dispersants don't make the oil go away, but simply hide it, concealing it underwater. The dispersants themselves, they say, cause other problems.

"Dispersants also leave behind a witch's brew of other potentially-dangerous chemicals after interacting with crude oil in water," Smith said. "Not only do these toxic components damage the environment, but they introduce potentially-serious human health and marine environmental problems."

Sawyer says Louisianans can expect to experience long-term effects for some time, not only to their health, but also their ecosystem and way of life. And the real problems can't necessarily be seen, he says.

Toxic soup

"When you fly over the Macondo site where the Deepwater Horizon rig was located, the water looks like a gelatinous toxic soup thanks to this mix of dispersants and oil," he said.

The attorneys and the scientist say dispersants were meant to be used at the surface of oil spills. Instead, they say, millions of gallons of Corexit were used at the Macondo wellhead site to prevent the oil spill from surfacing. As a result, they say the dispersant has caused as much as 70 percent of the spill to remain hidden from view.

To date, Smith, Stag and Sawyer claim BP has applied nearly two million gallons of Corexit dispersant. They say documented measurements of some of these chemicals are in great excess of established and risk-based lethal levels.

While BP has stopped the Gulf oil leak, at least for now, the company is coming under harsh criticism in Congress for the way it's gone about cleaning up the oil spill.

As clean up crews last week reported much of the spilled oil has disappeared from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) released a letter blasting the oil company for using too much dispersant. Markey said BP used thousands of gallons of the chemical each day to try to break up the oil.

Scientists See Food Chain Dangers in Oil, Dispersants

BP spill damage not limited to Gulf creatures; humans at risk too

06/14/2010 | ConsumerAffairs

By Lisa Wade McCormick

Jeff Phillips, Environmental Contaminants Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, rescues a Brown Pelican from the Barataria Bay in Grand Isle, La., June 4, 2010. State and federal wildlife services pulled approximately 60 oil-covered Brown Pelicans in two days from the Barataria Bay area. (FWS Photo)Wildlife biologist Doug Inkley is haunted by memories of the thousands of dead jellyfish he saw floating in thick black oil-tainted water during his recent trip to the Gulf of Mexico.

But the senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation(NWF) is just as frightened about the images no one has yet seen from BPs catastrophic oil spill, which is spewing thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf each day.

Hes worried about the damage the oil -- and the dispersants used to break it down -- are doing to the fragile marine life below the surface.

That is a rich marine community filled with deep water coral reefs, squid, fish, mussels, crabs, and shrimp, said Inkley, who spent a week in Venice, Louisiana, surveying the region. The vast majority of the impact is on those marine species that are out of sight. But they should not be out of mind.

Oil is toxic and it affects marine life, he added. It gets in the gills of fish and causes breathing difficulties. And it no doubt is having an impact on plankton. One needs to be concerned about the marine ecosystem and the food chain effects from this.

Compounding this environmental nightmare, he said, are the more than one million gallons of dispersants BP has released into the fertile fishing water.

BP, with the permission of our government, is adding dispersants to the oil at a subsea depth of 5,000 feet, Inkley said. That is causing the oil to break up and be more widely dispersed. There are not as many oil slicks forming on the surface, which means potentially less damage to the birds. But youre trading one type of damage for another type of damage.

Those dispersants contain chemicals. And chemicals can kill fish and wildlife. If they dont kill them, they can impair their ability to reproduce.

A coalition of more than 250 environmental and public health officials echoed many of Inkleys concerns. The Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition has urged Congress to add provisions that ensure the safety of these dispersants in a bill pending on Capitol Hill to overhaul the countrys antiquated law that governs toxic chemicals.

Under the 34-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the government doesnt require companies that make dispersants to disclose the chemicals in their products. The law also doesnt mandate companies to sufficiently test products to ensure their safety, the coalition said.

'Rolling the dice'

We are rolling the dice with the health of workers and marine life in the Gulf by using dispersants that we know very little about, said Andy Igrejas, the coalitions director.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires two short-term tests of acute toxicity on fish and shrimp for dispersants to be used in any quantities, he and coalition members said. There is also limited short-term data on the individual ingredients used in the dispersants and virtually no data on toxicity to surface- or bottom-dwelling organisms, land animals and plants, or birds.

The limited testing that was conducted (on the dispersants) indicates they are neither the least toxic nor the most effective among available alternatives, the coalition wrote in a statement released a few days ago. In addition, under current law the dispersant ingredients are allowed to remain secret despite their use in unprecedented quantities, and in ways never anticipated by regulators.

As a result of these failures, the health of the workers in the Gulf and the ocean itself may face added threats on top of those posed by the leaking oil.

A doctor who recently visited the Gulf confirmed the fishermen hired by BP to help with the clean-up effort are scared about the health risk they may face from exposure to the dispersants and the oil.

Theyre talking about their health symptoms and their concerns about the oil spill and the dispersants, said Dr. Gina Solomon, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Theyre smelling odors. Theyre feeling sick and they have particular concerns about the dispersants because there are so many unknowns about them.

I wish I could reassure them that its okay, but without more data on the environmental and health effects of these chemicals, its tough to make science-based determinations of safety.

The company initially declined to release the chemicals in the 1.1 million gallons of Corexit dispersants used in the Gulf because of proprietary reasons, coalition members said.

Some information was provided about them (last week), but theres not enough information on effects of those chemical because the law didnt require them to be fully tested, Solomon said.

Treatment delayed

The fishermen also delayed seeking medical treatment because they were afraid BP would fire them if they voiced any concerns, said a chemist and community activist who has helped workers in the Gulf.

We were having fishermen going out dealing with the oil and the dispersants and they were having severe health impacts, said Wilma Subra of New Iberia, Louisiana. But most of the chemicals (in the dispersants) were proprietary and we didnt have a good idea on the components and the potential health impact. Many of the fishers were also scared to speak out when they had health impacts because they were led to believe that BP would fire them.

Their wives spoke up for them.

And they received the message that if you dont be quiet, BP will fire you, Subra said. In late May, when the workers were brought in to the hospital. Thats when the proprietary issue came up.

The medical staff didnt know what they were exposed to because they didnt have a list of the chemicals in the dispersants, she added. EPA released what chemicals are in the dispersants (last week), but before that, the people who went for medical assistance were not able to get treatment because the doctors didnt know the chemicals they were exposed to.

This problem illustrates why its critical for companies to disclose the toxins in their products, Subra and other members of the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Coalition said.

This (spill) has impacted a large number of fishing communities, Subra said. And this information is desperately needed immediately. Not a month after an event occurs.

But the toll the apocalyptic spill -- the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history -- is having on humans is only part of this tragic story, scientists say. Marine and wildlife in the region will be impacted by the oil and toxic dispersants for years maybe even decades.

When I see the birds and the horrible images that are now coming out from the Gulf on whats happening at the surface, I think wait a minute, whats happening below the surface? said Murphy, Ph.D., the societys director of Science and Education. We ought to pay attention to those chemicals and the impact theyre having on our marine environment.

Polluted womb

Whats happening below the surface may be far more important than the images were seeing at the surface. To illustrate his point, Murphy compared Mother Earth and her waters to a woman and her unborn child. If you think of about a human embryo in an aquatic medium, the place has to be absolutely clean and pristine environment, he said. Now think about the ocean. That is the womb of the planet for these green organisms that are now spawning and reproducing.

And now that womb is polluted with oil and toxic chemicals.

The ripple effects from all this contamination will likely spread to our entire food chain, Murphy said, And those implications are staggering.

Its beyond scary, he said. All organisms make up our food chain and the food we harvest is being exposed to an incredible number of different chemicals.

NWFs biologist Inkley shares those fears.

During his recent trip to Louisiana, he spent time on the water and in the air to get a firsthand look at the damage from the oil that has poured into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20. One image struck a chilling chord with him.

Im sitting on the Gulf, 50 miles from the spill site, and there is half-inch thick layer of sticky black and brown oil, like it just came out of the ground, with thousands of dead jelly fish, he recalled. The smell was overwhelming and I just dont know how any living creature could survive swimming in it. But what I saw is just the tip of the iceberg. The impact from all this will last for years, if not decades.

There are other pictures the scientist can't forget too.

Theyre photographic evidence of the pain and suffering this crisis has already inflicted on wildlife in the area,

Theyre the pictures of helpless pelicans mired in oil.

Thats horrifying, Inkley said. It shows how helpless all life is in that area and how vulnerable it is to this spill. Right now is nesting season for brown pelicans, roseate spoonbills, and a host of other birds. Knowing that it only takes a drop or two of oil to kill a developing chick in an egg, I could not help but feel a great sense of loss as I watched birds return to their nests after diving for food in the oily waters of the Gulf.

Asked to assess BPs response to this environmental crisis, Inkley called it inappropriate.

The effort I saw was severely lacking given that I saw one skimmer operating in four days, he told us. There are not enough skimmers or boom to protect the wetlands. And we (the NWF) dont believe that BP should be left in charge of accessing the damage. They have a vested interest in minimizing the damage.

The media and the public should also be allowed to see the extent of the damage from this disastrous spill, which has oozed oil into the Gulf for more than 55 days. Reporters have not been allowed to take pictures in certain areas and people have been pushed off beaches, Inkley said. Something is wrong.

I believe BP has been totally inappropriate in its actions responding to this spill. Theyve withheld information. They claim theyre transparent, but their transparency has an opaque screen.

Heroic volunteers

In the midst of this environmental tragedy, however, Inkley said there are many heroic deeds underway by the volunteers helping the sick and injured wildlife in the region.

When you have an animal come in that is covered with oil, there is much more involved than simply cleaning it, he said. The people working in the area have specialized training in handling and treating wildlife. They wash them off and attend to their other needs, like fixing any broken bones. Its a complicated process with dedicated people.

This is important work, especially with the endangered populations, he added. Thats the case with all five types of sea turtles in that area. All are threatened or endangered. And some of these sea turtles dont mature until they are a couple of decades old. If we lose the adults and take them out of the population it will have an effect for yearsif not decades.

But where do you release the animals once theyre clean and healthy?

Their nests and breeding grounds are now tainted with oil and toxic chemicals.

If this (spill) keeps spreading, I dont know where youre going to re-release them, Inkley said. Birds have a strong tendency to return to that (nesting) area. Sea turtles have a tendency to go back to their same nesting beach. So even if we get an animal rehabilitated, it may get into trouble again. That is why its so important to get this oil spill stopped and stopped now.

Inkley also said its important to start work now on long-term restoration plans for the Gulf.

And we need to look at a clean energy future and end our dependency on carbon-based fuels, he said. Youve never heard of a wind turbine exploding. There are huge costs associated with our dependency on oil and gas, and environmental disasters are no longer a hidden cost.

The Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition said revamping the TSCA reform bill -- with provisions that address the safety of dispersants --- will also help protect the environment, wildlife, and marine life.

• Limiting Trade Secrets: Under the current law, dispersant manufacturers routinely claim the chemicals and product ingredients are confidential business information. The coalition wants the new law to give the EPA authority to force companies to disclose the chemicals in the dispersants and their concentrations -- when the publics interest exceeds private interests. Inkley supports this provision. If theyre dumping these dispersants into our nations waters we have the right to know whats in them.

• Testing Long-term Effects: Only a few short-term aquatic toxicity tests of dispersants are now required and individual ingredients are rarely subject to any mandated testing, the coalition said. The new law must require testing sufficient to identify long- as well as short-term effects on the marine environment, wildlife, workers, and local residents, the coalition said;

• Proof of Safety: The EPA is currently not required to assess the safety of dispersants or their ingredients. The coalition said the new law must place the burden of proof on the dispersant makers to demonstrate the safety of their products;

• Sufficient Regulatory Authority: The EPA must now prove unreasonable risk in order to restrict or control the use of dispersant ingredients. The coalition wants the new laws to give the EPA authority to disallow use of any dispersant that fails to meet safety requirements, and to immediately halt or alter dispersant use where on-the-ground conditions warrant. Meanwhile, Inkley said he will continue to monitor the damage in the Gulf and plans to head back to the region soon.

How to help

What about those who cant travel to the region now, but still want to help the animals and people impacted by this spill?

They can assist with the recovery and clean-up effort, Inkley said, by:

• Making a donation to the National Wildlife Federation. Consumers can donate online or by texting the word Wildlife to 20222 to contribute $10. Some school classes are holding bake sales and rising money for us that we will put to good use, Inkley said. We have established a special fund for Gulf Coast Restoration.

And every day the oil continues to gush into the Gulf and the toxic dispersants continue to be used solidify his fears that the wildlife, marine life and people in the region will be impacted for years to come.

I hope you can call me in five years and say: Dr. Inkley, you were wrong. The Gulf is fine. I would love to be wrong. But I dont think I am. I think we will be seeing an impaired ecosystem with wildlife populations below their levels for years, maybe even decades. And it will be a long time before the people recover their livelihoods.

But the senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation(NWF) is just as frightened about the images no one has yet seen from BPs catastrophic oil spill, which is spewing thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf each day.

Hes worried about the damage the oil -- and the dispersants used to break it down -- are doing to the fragile marine life below the surface.

That is a rich marine community filled with deep water coral reefs, squid, fish, mussels, crabs, and shrimp...

Gulf Dispersant Making Matters Worse, Suit Says

Plaintiffs say chemical is ineffective, hazard to health

06/18/2010 | ConsumerAffairs

By Unknown Author

By Jon HoodConsumerAffairs.com

June 18, 2010
The dispersant BP is using to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf is actually more toxic than the oil itself, a Louisiana class action lawsuit claims. In an unrelated filing, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell filed a brief asking that consolidated cases stemming from the Deepwater Horizon explosion be heard in the Eastern District of Louisiana federal court.

The dispersant suit, filed today in a New Orleans federal court, seeks $5 million on behalf of Gulf coast residents and those working to clean up the spill. The action also targets Nalco Holding Company, the corporation that manufactures the dispersant, known as Corexit.

According to the complaint, the 1.3 million gallons of dispersant used so far have caused a toxic chemical to be a permanent part of the sea bed and food chain in the bio structure. The plaintiffs say that the chemical is actually four times more lethal than the oil itself, and that BP has allowed an even more dangerous condition to exist in the Gulf of Mexico than if the oil was allowed to float to the shoreline.

Nalco issued a press release on Thursday asserting that federal testing has concluded that the use of the COREXIT dispersant remains a safe, effective, and critical tool in mitigating additional damage in the Gulf. The statement quotes Nalco's chief technology officer, Dr. Mani Ramesh, as saying that the dispersant is safe.

The use of the dispersant has had no impact on marine life. These latest [federal] tests underscore previous findings that show COREXIT rapidly biodegrades and does not bio-accumulate, Ramesh said. The oil continues to be the primary hazard in the Gulf -- for workers, wildlife and vegetation. Dispersants have prevented more oil from reaching our shoreline.

Making it worse?

Still, a 2005 study by the National Research Council found that in some circumstances Corexit had no effect whatsoever, and occasionally even made conditions worse.

Additionally, Corexit has been banned in the United Kingdom -- where BP is based -- since 1998, when it was found hazardous to the food chain.

A May article in The New York Times reported that Corexit ranks far above dispersants made by competitors in toxicity and far below them in effectiveness in handling. Specifically, the article singled out Dispersit, a competing chemical, as being almost twice as effective in cleaning up oil spills while being, at most, one-half as toxic.

And Corexit, which was used in response to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off the coast of Alaska, has been identified as a possible contributor to serious health problems suffered by recovery workers there, the Times noted. Specifically, a number of maladies that included kidney and liver problems were thought to be connected to the chemical 2-butoxyethanol, an ingredient in Corexit 9527. Both that dispersant and an updated sibling, Corexit 9500, are being used to clean up the Gulf spill.

At least one of the plaintiffs' attorneys is suggesting that Corexit got the nod because former officials from BP and ExxonMobil sit on Nalco's board.

Basically the oil companies are selling themselves their own product, said attorney Arlen Braud. That can be the only explanation as to why they didnt use the better ones.

Caldwell's filing

In his filing with the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, Caldwell said the Eastern District of Louisiana is the most appropriate venue for consolidated proceedings citing the courts proximity and connection to the disaster, as well as the convenience for affected litigants and witnesses.

The impacts from this catastrophe are, and will continue to be, most keenly felt by Louisiana's citizens including the families of those Louisiana offshore workers who lost their lives in the explosion, those who were injured, the fisherman and their families who depend on Louisiana's natural resources for a living, and the citizens who live along Louisiana's coastline, which is already fragile and disappearing at alarming rates, Caldwell said.

By Jon HoodConsumerAffairs.com

June 18, 2010
The dispersant BP is using to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf is actually more toxic than the oil itself, a Louisiana class action lawsuit claims. In an unrelated filing, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell filed a brief asking that consolidated cases stemming from the Deepwater Horizon explosion be heard in the Eastern District of Louisiana federal court.

Gulf Coast Soldiers On As BP Spill Fills the Gulf of Mexico

New Orleans hosts its first, and maybe last, Oyster Festival as the oil slick spreads

06/07/2010 | ConsumerAffairs

By Unknown Author

By Leonard Earl JohnsonConsumerAffairs.com

June 7, 2010
New Orleans tourism is not showing much effect from British Petroleum's gift that keeps on giving. After all, tourists never did come here for the water.

There is no coastline inside Orleans Parish. At least not yet. No marshes. No wetlands. No water. No oil.

The oil-assaulted wetlands are all below New Orleans. And west of the River. And now east. The heart aches with the sight of each noble pelican slathered with deadly black goo.

It is those marshlands of Plaquemines and Saint Bernard and Jefferson Parishes that feed and protect us. We fear greatly for them. And now the beaches of Mississippi. And Alabama. And Florida.

British Petroleum's gusher is filling the Gulf of Mexico with oil.

But in the French Quarter and Uptown cafes and shops the crowds are normal. Summer-thin, to be sure, but normally so.
Inside restaurants -- numbering two-hundred more than before the hurricanes of 2005 -- the atmosphere is comfortable and the kitchens are busy.

Summer comes early to New Orleans. It is a city as deeply inside the magnolia curtain as it can be. One step further back and we would be out in the off-shore oil patch.

This time of year the heat and humidity are present enough that you might comfortably spend an afternoon sharing a bottle of wine with them on the gallery.

This is a time when crowds melt down to small trickles of hearty family travelers, worldly Europeans (who don't buy souvenirs), and assorted National Geographic readers.

They come with smaller footprints than the high-rolling oil barons, conventioneers, and limitlessly-funded bankers who account for the bulk of our high annual hotel occupancy. They tilt the numbers heavily during the cooler months. Then they leave the summer for us to do with as we please with our better-mannered visitors.

In June we become less like a Disneyland for adults and more like a city. This time of year we can get a seat on the street car, and ride our bicycle without navigating around tourists walking five abreast down any street in the French Quarter.

Now we see who is in town

Recently seen grazing in trendy cafes among the Summer herd has been British Petroleum's head honcho (I guess he is the head? Can anyone tell what all those BP titles mean?), Chief Executive Officer and apologist, Tony Hayward. His table mate was Admiral Thad Allen. Hopefully they dined on Louisiana seafood. God knows those two had things to talk about.

The megacatastrophe they can not handle has now reached as far as Florida's white sands, with promise of going even farther.

Their meetings are not the dreaded collusion of power that talk radio can neither stop talking about nor locate. Those meetings go on in secreted situations. Like Dick Cheney's Vice Presidential office. Where undisclosed energy barons met and planned America's future without regulations that required off-shore drillers to plan, baby plan for a worst-case, May-Day situation. Like the one today filling the Gulf of Mexico with oil. Louisiana Senator David Vitter led the battle for repeal.

BP's end of the world not withstanding, this is still one of the better times to be in New Orleans. And thus it has been for the thirty-some years I have called this 300-year-old City home.

A story of fun and bad timing

On Sunday June 5, amid the worst assault on America's fisheries ever, the first annual New Orleans Oyster Festival launched itself in the broiling midday sun, atop a melting asphalt parking lot, between Decatur Street and cool green Woldenberg Park overlooking the Mississippi River. Rent must have been cheaper in the parking lot. Proceeds went to save our coastline.

In the park atop the levee, TV luminaries like James Carville and Anderson Cooper told audiences nothing of the Oyster Festival but lots about the oil pollution.

Zazzle.com created a custom stamp for the New Orleans Oyster Festival

Down in the hot parking lot, Andrea Apuzzo, owner of Metairie, Louisiana's noted Northern Italian restaurant, Andrea's, stood beside his tent offering savory examples of his great skill with Louisiana oysters and shrimp. A wafting tar-pitch smell washed over us. A tourist asked if the odor was from the Gulf oil spill.

Apuzzo waved his hand towards the row of tents and said, "That's from the oysters down there."

It was not, of course. What was down there was more great food. Like the signature dish, Shrimp Rmoulade, from Galatoire's, one of the grand old ladies of New Orleans restaurants. In the French Quarter, Galatoire's invented American Rmoulade.

The example they passed out of their tent was as succulent as the day of the dish's birth.

Dickie Brennan's Bourbon House, also in the French Quarter, served one of the best dishes of the day, andouille creme sauce over oysters with a tasty slice of tangy chapati bread.

Another best dish was the three oysters fried and topped with a smoked tomato relish, from Luke's, in the Central Business District.

This divine offering came from one of the older of the 200 new post-Katrina/Rita restaurants. I had not been to it (there are so many) but let me say, welcome, welcome, welcome! They are on Saint Charles Avenue near Poydras Street.

Dishes ran five-to-seven dollars, and servings were a bit less than half normal in-house sizes. If we are all still here come next broiling hot June we will be back.

Not that anyone at the Oyster Fest said much about it, but President Obama was here again, Saturday, for his third visit since the oil volcano erupted.
He didn't stop for oysters. How could he, with Governor Bobby Jindal hollering in front of any mike that will open up for him that he, Obama, should do something about it now?

The sad truth is if anyone could really do something, they would really do it.

The Oyster Fest, we hope, is staying. And the president is welcome any time, any year.

Meanwhile in the End Times

BP CEO Hayward has dropped out of sight after his barrage of apologetic television ads bombed. He said things like he would "like his life back" to the families of the eleven killed when the Horizon drilling platform exploded.

Thad Allen has turned his Admiralty offensive East, following the oil plumes. He was last seen in Alabama.

In Florida, bigger tar balls and sticky oil patches are washing ashore, and Florida Governor Charlie Crist, looking like a suntanned movie star, walked gingerly on a black polka-dotted white beach. He told the TV audience he was flying over to New Orleans to meet with the President of the United States. He did not holler about doing something magical. But he did not come to the Oyster Fest, either.

Life goes on. The food is great. And the lines are shorter. Just like last summer.

---

Leonard Earl Johnson is a former cook, merchant seaman, photographer and columnist for Les Amis de Marigny, a New Orleans monthly magazine. Post-Katrina, he has decamped to Lafayette, La. Columns past, present and future are at www.lej.org.

By Leonard Earl JohnsonConsumerAffairs.com

June 7, 2010
New Orleans tourism is not showing much effect from British Petroleum's gift that keeps on giving. After all, tourists never did come here for the water.

There is no coastline inside Orleans Parish. At least not yet. No marshes. No wetlands. No water. No oil.

The oil-assaulted wetlands are all below New Orleans. And west of the River. And now east. The heart aches with the sight of each noble pelican ...

BP Facing Nearly 100 Suits

The pipe threaded inside the leaking oil pipe a mile under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico did not work. It was hoped it would save some of the oil spewing like a volcano from BP's hole in the bottom of the sea and pump it aboard a waiting ship sitting overhead. It didn't work. We heard the news from Fox on Sunday morning.

There was both good and bad news later Sunday. The good news is BP is taking oil up the mile-long pipe to the mother ship hovering above the gushing volcano, according to BP spokesman Mark Proegler. The bad news is Proegler can not say how much of the oil is being captured or what percentage of the discharge is being diverted to the holding ship above.

Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president for exploration and production, said during a news conference that the amount being drawn was gradually increasing, but it would take several days to measure it.

Proegler had indicated earlier, at the Joint Spill Command Center in Louisiana, that the tube was capturing most of the oil coming from the broken pipe. This particular break is thought to be contributing about 85 percent of the crude in the overall leak. But estimates of the size of the leak vary wildly.

Potentially worse news is that computer models show the oil either already in the Gulf Stream or within three miles. Which means the U. S. Eastern Seaboard is at risk. And possibly the United Kingdom, where BP has home offices in London.

How much?

The oil is leaking at least 210,000 gallons a day, according to BP and the U. S. government. It is ten times that amount, say other scientists.

"When you hear officials disagreeing like that you wonder if they know how to handle this." We are listening to a table of local oystermen at Shukes, a popular oyster house in Abbeville, home of the first commercial oyster fishery in Louisiana..

The only good news today: Shukes has just announced they have a two-week supply of oysters on ice.

We have spent the week in Acadiana, the French-Canadian, Creole region of Louisiana. This is Cajun Country. It is home to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and their football team, the Ragin Cajuns, and also home to Louisiana's oil industry.

Indeed, it does. But California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced last week that all oil drilling would be banned from California's golden shores, causing local Lafayette radio talk-show host, Ken Romero, to say in a recorded radio spot that California should be barred from receiving Louisiana oil. Not likely given the fluidity of the product, but indicative of the faith many here place in Big Oil.

Of course, Big Oil has made the region rich. It may be asking too much to grasp how it may now make its culture non-existent if, in fact, the Gulf becomes a dead sea. But the truth is that -- as always -- no one knows what is going to happen. Think how much wealthier Rupert Murdoch would be if The Wall Street Journal printed tomorrow's stock prices.

New way'a doin'

At a Native American Pow Wow this weekend at the Tunica-Biloxi Reservation and Paragon Casino Resort, at Marksville, it was not hard to find people who have seen total cultural and economic change. "We will just find a new way'a doing," was pretty much the consensus among Pow Wow attendees.

All around us is the prosperity of Louisiana's first land-based gambling casino sitting on the edge of where recently there was an longtime air of hopelessness, we heard a feathered dancer telling the audience, "Our people are survivors."

In New Orleans, the smell of oil is noticeable even to those most resistant to noticing. At Pascal's Manale, the Napoleon Avenue restaurant that invented New Orleans Barbecued Shrimp -- a succulent dish far removed from simply tossing some shrimps on the BBQ -- our waiter placed steaming bowels before us and tied bibs around our necks.

The shrimp were as fine as Judy Sherrod remembered from her youth. Sherrod was in New Orleans for a photography workshop. She drinks two beers with her shrimp, and wears a safari jacket of the type you associate with a world adventurer.

"I've recently returned to New Orleans, after many years." During those years she has been busy compiling a body of work titled: "Exploring the Mystery of Easter Island."

Neither of us could smell oil in the air that day. Nor taste it in our food. However, a few days later the smell was very noticeable.

"The feeling I get in the pit of my stomach is like the feeling I got when all those generals and politicians and industrialists kept assuring us about the war in Vietnam," said French Quarter resident L. A. Norma.

And, perhaps most frightening, we still do not know what "this" is going to end up being, as we enter the fourth week of BP's big oil volcano at the bottom of the sea.

---

Leonard Earl Johnson is a former cook, merchant seaman, photographer and columnist for Les Amis de Marigny, a New Orleans monthly magazine. Post-Katrina, he has decamped to Lafayette, La. Columns past, present and future are at www.lej.org.

The pipe threaded inside the leaking oil pipe a mile under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico did not work. It was hoped it would save some of the oil spewing like a volcano from BP's hole in the bottom of the sea and pump it aboard a waiting ship sitting overhead. It didn't work. We heard the news from Fox on Sunday morning.

There was both good and bad news later Sunday. The good news is BP is taking oil up the mile-long pipe to the mother ship hovering above the gushing ...

Failure of BP's Latest Effort Brings Despair But Not Surprise

Feds agree to try building berms; cleanup effort falters as workers get sick

ConsumerAffairs

By Unknown Author

By Leonard Earl JohnsonConsumerAffairs.com

May 30, 2010
Anger and despair greeted the news that British Petroleum's latest attempt to cap its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico had failed. It was the news that everyone knew was coming, said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.

Almost from Day One of the explosion that sank the Horizon drilling rig, Nungesser has advocated building some kind of berm, or levee, to capture at least some of the oil before it makes its way to shore. His pleas went largely ignored.

But after President Obama's latest visit, his second, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jendall said he had won Obama's approval to begin building a small, four-mile berm to test the idea. No one is sure the plan will work but the hope is that it will at least reduce damage to the fertile wetlands that are home to millions of oysters and clams.

President Obama meets with fishermen in Venice, La., Sunday, May 2. White House photo.

After President Obama's motorcade roared out of town, Nungesser said of the president, "I think he gets it." Plaquemines Parish is the last spit of land below New Orleans and is home to a unique economy built largely around fishing, shrimping and talking about it.

Meanwhile, clean-up efforts in the Gulf were interruped as workers became ill and had to return to shore. All 125 commercial vessles working to clean up the oil spill were ordered back to shore, at least temporarily, ProPublica reported.

Cajun Navy

Earlier on Grand Isle, Jefferson Parish Homeland Security Director Deano Bonano had commandeered all forty of BP's hired boats sitting off-island when Bonano and the boatmen saw oil lapping ashore. These are the shrimpers and other local boatmen now hired by BP for clean-up work.

At first BP officials said what Bonano was asking was illegal. But not so, according to Louisiana Homeland Security laws.

"We've made requests several times ... actually spent four hours in Houma meeting with BP officials to try and get these skimmers mobilized, but that had not been done," said Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts.

In Washington, Obama appointed former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, and William K. Reilly, Chairman Emertis of the World Wildlife Forum, as a two-man investigative team. Cynics said it exemplified the Washington tradition that when there is nothing to be done, a committee must be appointed to fill time.

Nungesser vs. Big Oil

Nungesser

Nungesser has gained near-hero status among coastal residents for his sharp criticism of slow and ineffective action from British Petroleum, Baton Rouge, and Washington. He was, after all, first out of the pulpit with the idea of sand berms.

Others cringe at the thought of levees ringing the marshlands protecting us from oil-laden hurricane winds. Levees failed the region greatly during the Hurricanes of 2005, you may recall, and the 2010 hurricane season begins June 1.

Airborne incendiaries

Something like the panic of escaping over the last bridge out of New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina began lashing the pillars can be heard on local talk radio. As in most of America, radio talk is mostly right wing and anti-government. But some of those who normally ramble on about Obamas supposed Communism and non-citizenship now temper their views with blame for downsizing government regulation of big oil.

WWL-AM, the powerful New Orleans radio station that comforted many in evacuation during Katrina and Rita leaves the subject of the oil spill for nothing less than the LSU-Ole Miss game.

Before the game took the airwaves, local talkmaster Spud McConnell entertained many phone calls from listeners who had witnessed hazmat-attired workers arrive on school buses and clean the already relatively clean beaches of Grand Isle while President Obama looked on. When the President left, the workers took off their coveralls, reboarded the buses and left, the callers said.

Back in Acadiana

For others the problem is old and simple. Four elderly oil workers stood outside the City Diner in downtown Lafayette's Oil Center, a 1950-ish development of strip mall-like buildings housing much of the region's oil related offices, and the shops and cafes that serve them. A spanking new Lafayette General Hospital tower rises above it all.

The retired oil workers tell each other how vital their work has been to the well-being of America.

Not so for the brown pelican, the Louisiana state bird brought back from DDDT-related near-extinction a decade ago by the gift of eggs from Florida. Like its human counterparts, this feathered fisherman has run amuck of BPs big leak. The big birds' only two Louisiana rookeries are covered in oil. This time there may be no Florida eggs with which to reseed them. The seemingly unstoppable glob moves steadily towards the Sunshine State.

---

Leonard Earl Johnson is a former cook, merchant seaman, photographer and columnist for Les Amis de Marigny, a New Orleans monthly magazine. Post-Katrina, he has decamped to Lafayette, La. Columns past, present and future are at www.lej.org.

By Leonard Earl JohnsonConsumerAffairs.com

May 30, 2010
Anger and despair greeted the news that British Petroleum's latest attempt to cap its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico had failed. It was the news that everyone knew was coming, said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.

Almost from Day One of the explosion that sank the Horizon drilling rig, Nungesser has advocated building some kind of berm, or levee, to capture at least some of the oil before it ...

State 'won't take a dime less' than it is owed, its AG asserts

Tempers are growing short along the Gulf Coast, with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood firing the latest round, saying his state "will not take a dime less" than it is entitled to from the claims process established by BP to compensate victims of the massive oil gusher that is fouling the waters of the Gulf Coast.

He warned the company not to try an end-run around the states.

On Monday, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell filed a Petition for Discovery and Investigation against British Petroleum in state court in Plaquemines Parish.

Hood said his experience with Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that an open claims process is essential to keeping Gulf Coast businesses and individuals from succumbing to bankruptcy and foreclosure. "Victims need money now to stay afloat," Hood said.

In initial meetings between Gulf Coast attorneys general and BP, Hood said he demanded -- and BP agreed -- that no claimants would be required to sign a waiver of their right to sue later and that BP waiver the statutory liability cap of $75 million. The company agreed to both and, so far, has paid $5.5 million in claims to Mississippi residents and businesses.

But Hood said that he is concerned the company's strategy is to go to federal court in an attempt to make an end run around the states.

"BP and Transocean have revealed their legal strategy by filing actions before federal judges in Houston, Texas, in an attempt to drag all claims by individuals, businesses, and the state and federal governments into a foreign jurisdiction," Hood said. "We want the claims made by the state of Mississippi to be decided by a Mississippi state court."

A hard lesson

Hood said Mississippi learned a hard but valuable lesson after Katrina.

"The insurance industry abused the federal court system to delay the state court suit which my office filed within two weeks of Katrina. It took Mississippi four years to bring the issue before our Mississippi Supreme Court, where it rightfully belonged. Just this past October, the Court ruled in our favor nine to zero," he said.

But Hood said it was a "hollow victory" because by the time of the state court decision most cases had already settled.

"I will fight to make sure the oil companies do not abuse the federal system to delay justice due the people of Mississippi," he said. "If the 11th Amendment to our United States Constitution has any meaning left, it is that state claims should be litigated in our state courts."

The 11th Amendment basically recognizes that states have a certain degree of sovereign immunity and are not totally subordinate to the federal government.

Louisiana petition

The Louisiana petition alleges that BP has failed to cooperate and share important information with the State, specifically information requested repeatedly by the Louisiana Workforce Commission and the Louisiana Department of Social Services regarding all claims data collected by ESIS, the third party administrator for claims, and for information about workers hired by BP. The purpose of the petition is to gather information as part of the State's investigation as to the causes of the spill and impacts to the state.

"Today's filing was a last resort in trying to get information from BP that the Department of Social Services and the Louisiana Workforce Commission have requested repeatedly from BP since May 3 regarding the BP claims process," Caldwell said.

Louisiana, Caldwell says, has made several requests for information and/or further explanation but has not received an adequate response. Despite promises that BP would cooperate and coordinate its response with the State, Caldwell says he has seen little evidence.

"Today's petition is a request for a court to order BP to produce information that the State needs to monitor BP's claims process to ensure that our citizens are being treated fairly and receiving proper assistance," Caldwell said. "As Attorney General, be assured that I will take any and all necessary legal actions to safeguard the interests of those citizens and other entities of Louisiana who elect to file or are considering filing claims through the process BP has established."

Over the weekend BP announced that it was capturing most of the oil leaking from the ocean floor, though Obama administration officials conceded the oil might continue to link well into the Autumn months. BP said the cap it attached to the top of the leaking well siphoned off 10,500 barrels of oil out of an estimated 12,000-19,000 barrels a day leaking from the wellhead.

The spill's costs continue to escalate and now have exceeded $1.25 billion, according to BP's estimates. BP has set aside $350 million to pay for construction of sand barriers along the Louisiana coastline, to protect environmentally sensitive marshlands.

Tempers are growing short along the Gulf Coast, with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood firing the latest round, saying his state "will not take a dime less" than it is entitled to from the claims process established by BP to compensate victims of the massive oil gusher that is fouling the waters of the Gulf Coast.

He warned the company not to try an end-run around the states.

On Monday, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell filed a Petition for Discovery and Invest...

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